Your guide for cruising Usenet

Usenet fans rejoice:European Usenet provider UseNeXT has just extended binary retention time to a whopping 1,111 days. This means that binary files will now remain on UseNeXT servers for more than three years! New Usenet customers should make sure to compare retention times as they can vary heavily between providers.

Another reason to celebrate is the second cooperation between UseNeXT and mobile game producer dreamfab. You can receive 50 GB of free extra download volume if you complete the first ten levels in dreamfabs brand new puzzle game „Happy Hills“. After reaching the 10th level you will receive a special code which can be redeemed on dreamfabs facebook page.

Your goal in „Happy Hills“ is to destroy the evil Gloom Blocks who threaten the magical land of Euphoria. Euphoria is populated by friendly Happy Hills, filling the land with their joy and merriment. There are several types of Gloom Blocks, made of stone, wood, metal or other materials, each type with it’s distinctive weakness. You have to destroy the Gloom Blocks by taking advantage of their respective weakness in order to bomb, burn or drown them. This adds strategic depth to the game as the level design and type of enemies will grow steadily through the games 96 beautifully designed levels. And the best part: you can download Happy Hills free of charge!

The European Usenet Provider Usenet.nl has been the target of continued distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the course of the last few days, as 1usenet.com reports. The attacks caused the company website to go offline for several hours on June 23rd, 24th and again yesterday evening.

Usenet.nl was quick to assure that no user data has been stolen and security meassures have been increased to prevent further attacks. Still the case resembles similar attacks by hacker groups such as Anonymous or (the now defunct) LulzSec. For the moment it remains unclear however who is to be held responsible for the attacks on Usenet.nl.

Although Usenet users have (perhaps unrightfully) been held responsible for DDoS attacks in the past, this is (at least to my knowledge) the first time a major Usenet provider has been the target of such an attack. Let’s all hope it stays that way! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section!

Since Facebook started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, social networks have become more and more popular. Not only for private users who want to share their activities, photos and videos with their friends but also for businesses.

These social networks are an easy and cheap way for companies to communicate with their their customers and clients.

Starbucks did it, Lady Gaga is doing it right now and in Mark Zuckerberg’s mind everybody should be doing it. What should they be doing? Using the power of Social Media.

And many of the top Usenet providers are doing just that.

Giganews – The Texan Usenet provider Giganews has a nice Facebook fanpage with over 7,000 Likes and and a Twitter account with more than 4,000 followers. The Giganews guys are updating their site every couple of days, promoting new services or functions to their followers or having competitions (like the very cool T-shirt Slogan Competition).

UseNeXT– The european provider UseNeXT has the most fans of any Usenet provider. They count 20,000+ fans on their International UseNeXT fanpage and over 17,000 on their German fansite. There are also 600+ people following UseNext on Twitter and 1,100+ on UseNeXT Germany. UseNeXT offers good support on basic questions and posts info about their newest products and features every couple of days.

Binverse – And finally, one to keep an eye on. Binverse is a relatively new Usenet provider but growing rapidly. They relaunched their Facebook and Twitter pages recently and are picking up followers quickly.
A big plus is that these guys are not only publishing posts about their own products but also interesting news about relevant topics regarding the Web 2.0

As social media continues to grow, providers like these will remain a step ahead of the competition. Using the power of social media to connect and interact with your customers is a definite advantage.

UseNeXT binary retention time extended to over 1000 days!

The premium usenet provider UseNeXT celebrates extending binary retention time to over 1000 days. All binary files poster will remain on the usenet servers for this time, meaning that you can download files posted already 3 years ago with full bandwidth.

Within the last years retention time has been growing rapidly. Backin in 2007 the ususal timespan for binary retention was 60-100 days. This huge leap makes downloading from usenet even more attractive to many users.

In order to celebrate this special occasion, UseNeXT grants all its users 20 GB of highspeed volume on top.

Demoltion Dash: You`ll receive 50 GB for reaching the third level

Demolition Dash, a platform game developed by Dreamfab, is available in the AppleStore from today. Join Zilla, a rather friendly looking monster, on his rampage through the metropolises of the world. Once you have reached the third level you will receive 50GB of UseNeXT high-speed download volume. And there are more goodies on top.

In spite of just having raised the retention time for binaries to 910 days just a few weeks ago, the well-known Usenet provider UseNeXT raised the bar for competitors with a retention time of now 976 days. This means that files will remain on Usenet servers for more than 2 years and 8 months!

Retention time for text files remains unchanged at 1,500 days.

It has to be seen how other providers will react. As a rule, Usenet providers tend to offer similar retention times in order to remain competitive (check our list for an overview of some of the more famous Usenet access providers).

From a users point of view these changes are nothing but good news – looking at the harsh competition in the market, this upgrade surely won’t be the last.

Usenet offers you access to sheer endless amounts of information. If you are accessing Usenet via UseNeXT’s Tangysoft Client you are certainly familiar with the Freezone. The Freezone is full of software available under GNU (GNU General Public License) as well as movies and music provided for free by many independent artists. And the best part: no matter how many GB of data you download from the Freezone, your download volume does not decrease!

What´s new about the Freezone?
The Freezone on UseNeXT has been available for quite some time now. But till now, the Freezone content has been visible to Usenet-Users using the Tangysoft Client only. From now on everybody will be able to browse the Freezone online! A list is being published directly on UseNeXT’s website under the new category Freezone. Don’t waste any time and start searching the Freezone now.